“Burger King took great pains keep the launch of Satisfries under wraps. Last week, reporters were invited to preview a ‘top secret new product’ at a New York City hotel, where they were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements. Attendees were each served a carton of the fries on a plate that looked and tasted like any other fries, even leaving the familiar grease stains in their paper cartons.”

UM. So long, Horse_ebooks and Pronunciation Book! Because:

the creators of the two accounts, Jacob Bakkila and Thomas Bender, will prove that they are indeed human, appearing in a performance that is the final flourish in this suite of conceptual-art pieces, weaving together Horse_ebooks and Pronunciation Book

HOLY SHIT, WE ARE ALL DUPES. I don’t understand anything. NO NO NO. We thought Alexey Kouznetsov was @horse_ebooks? And that… IDK BuzzFeed something something has dirty hands into this? UGH. *climbs into hole screaming* OH NO:

Bear Stearns Bravo

— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) September 24, 2013

To honor what would have been Philip Edward Hartman’s 65th birthday, let’s watch one of his greatest performances that is currently available for embedding. (I would have put up this one were such a thing possible.) Once a year or so, given the churn and turnover of the Internet, a site will post Hartman’s audition reel for “Saturday Night Live” as if they were the first ones to discover it; if you want to get an early start on its 2014 appearance, today’s a good day for it.

“Yes, of course it could happen here. Just park and enter the Queens Center Mall on a sunny Monday morning and you see how soft a target it is for terrorist gunmen like the ones who slaughtered dozens of shoppers at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. Go do some shopping as the hostage situation in Africa airs live on TV and feel the big, fat bull’s-eye on your back — especially as the holidays approach, when we will jam malls like this one across the country. But if you’re a New Yorker, you don’t back down.”

Crazy times: Godspeed You! Black Emperor won the Polaris Prize, which celebrates a Canadian musician each year (they’ll run out soon, having already been through Caribou, Arcade Fire and Feist). Now Godspeed may be going on tour with Nine Inch Nails, but they are not prepared to accept life in the big gross leagues and the kind of hoopla that accompanies $30,000 prizes at this point twenty years into their life as a band. So they said this:

-holding a gala during a time of austerity and normalized decline is a weird thing to do.

-organizing a gala just so musicians can compete against each other for a novelty-sized cheque doesn’t serve the cause of righteous music at all.

-asking the toyota motor company to help cover the tab for that gala, during a summer where the melting northern ice caps are live-streaming on the internet, IS FUCKING INSANE, and comes across as tone-deaf to the current horrifying malaise.

So apparently not everyone is ready to cozy up to a #tasteful #brand. Almost everyone! Just not quite. Anyway, ❤ ❤ ❤: “us we’re gonna use the money to try to set up a program so that prisoners in quebec have musical instruments if they need them.”

No really, how much did you want to spend on Pearl Jam tickets? Was it… zero dollars? Or was it perhaps… $5995 dollars for general admission in the pit at Barclays on October 18th? Perhaps it was. Let’s do this thing, StubHub! Congratulations to all of us, for we made two things happen. First, we made bots that handled scalping for us. Second, we disrupted the concert ticket sale market, putting the ability to buy and sell (and scalp!) in the hands of everyone. But don’t worry, if you feel like $5995 is too little to pay for Pearl Jam, there’s some nice cheaper seats for you. Also Kurt Cobain was right 21 years ago, Pearl Jam is kind of terrible.

★★★★★ “Noo!” said the toddler, turning away from the apartment-building entrance. He had climbed out of his stroller up above 74th and come walking and jogging back down Broadway, darting ahead and circling back with quick, articulate steps. Every block or every minute was a new little adjustment — warm sun to bask in, a bracing gust, a dim spot of cloud shade while the nearby buildings stood in full light. His newly two-year-old legs veered through the crowd. All the vendors and table-operators were out at once: fruit, phone cases, DVDs, the Green Party. Straw hats and cotton prints still. Fairway had stone fruit and berries in the bins, but carving pumpkins below. Small herds of bicycles were riding along 72nd. After Amsterdam, in a deep gray moment, the toddler pulled up and asked for his hoodie. Now he was home but not finished. He headed around back, to the garden. The black decorative pool was wind-ruffled and spilling at its foot. He pulled a stray green leaf off the drain grate and plunged both hands in, to the wrists, wetting his cuffs. The water went flat, and then a new burst of wind chopped the surface into sparks. The leaves on the chest-high stalks were pale and withered, but some of the flowers on top were bright. The wind came pushing southward through the ornamental grasses, sending them bowing and seething before it, while in the same moment a countercurrent seized the empty stroller and sent it rolling straight north till it hit a wall. While he was examining the crash site, he found the box of ripe figs in the grocery bag and pulled them out. For this, a person would go upstairs.

“Why Does a Vicuña Jacket Cost $21,000?”

“They’re reminiscent of the Cobra Kai team in Karate Kid, yelling, ‘Sweep the leg! Sweep the leg!’ because they are unwilling to get into a Karate fight of their own.”
 — Usually I would be all, “Guess who! GUESS!” but oh my God it’s so depressing.

“Key and Peele’s biracialism is central to their comedy, but in a far different way than I’d imagined: it is expansive, not constricting, a Golden Ticket to themes rarely explored on television.”